Often it’s convenient to play the movie for a clip so it’s scaled to fit within the clip details panel at the top of the main window, but you can also play media in a separate window. The media dialog is resizable and offers additional features, such as full screen playback or slide show operation:
- Use the Play Media menu command (or toolbar button) to play selected clips one at a time. (You can also use the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl-P, or define a double click action of Media Preview in Preferences and then double click a clip to play its media).
- Use the Present Movie command to present the selected clips combined into a single sequence that plays smoothly as a whole (this is mainly intended for video clips).
- Use the Run Slide Show command to present the selected clips as a slide show of individual clips (this is mainly intended for stills and audio clips).
All these options use the media dialog to show the media, either in a window or full screen. Double click or press Escape to close the media dialog. See below for various other keyboard shortcuts you can use to control the media as it’s playing. For a description of the movie controller that is used when playing movies see the clip details panel.
There are also a number of Preferences options that control how media is played, for example the slide show delay. The Present Movie and Run Slide Show commands are only available if you turn on advanced menus.
Keyboard shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts can be used to control the media presentation and mark the clip that is playing and also control movie playback in the clip details panel. (Some keys are only relevant to the separate Media Dialog window or in the embedded Clip Details panel, but most are common to both.)
| Space bar | play or pause a movie |
| Up, Down | move to previous or next clip in the catalog |
| Escape (or Cmd-W) | close the media dialog |
| F | toggle into full screen mode. Double click to return to normal mode. |
| Tab (or R) | start or pause slide show mode |
| Enter | close a slide show |
| +, – | increase or decrease the audio volume |
| [, ] | rotate image 90 degrees left or right |
| D | double the playback size of the movie or image |
| Shift-D | restore playback to normal size |
| Ctrl-R | refresh the display, re-centering the window on the screen |
| 0-9 | adjust speed of slide show (when slide show is running) |
| Alt-0 – Alt-5 | set star rating of the clip |
| C | toggle showing/hiding the movie controller |
| J/K/L/; | jog-shuttle controls (see below) |
| Shift-L | toggle looping playback mode |
| Cmd/Ctrl-M | toggle the mark flag for the clip |
| Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-M | clear the mark flag for the clip |
| M | insert a timecode event marker |
| G/N/? | mark the clip as good/no good/maybe |
| I, O | set start/end of a selection (in2/out2) |
| P | play the selection from start to end (in2 to out2) |
| Shift P | Set the clip’s poster thumbnail to the current frame |
| T, Y | move to start/end of a selection (in2/out2) |
| S, E | play start/end of a selection (in2/out2) |
| Ctrl-J (or Cmd-I) | display clip details dialog |
| A | Toggle audio waveform display (for QuickTime movies only) |
| Cmd/Ctrl +/- | Zoom in and out of the audio waveform display |
JKL controls
The behaviour of the JKL jog-shuttle controls depends on the Preferences setting:
- In shuttle mode ‘J’ plays in reverse and ‘L’ plays forward. Successive presses will speed up playback to 1x, 1.5x, 2x, 3x, or 4x normal rate. Press ‘K’ to stop the movie, and hold down ‘K’ at the same time as pressing ‘J’ or ‘L’ to step one frame at a time. (Professional Edition only)
- In jog mode ‘J’ and ‘L’ step backwards by 0.5s or one frame respectively, while ‘L’ and ‘;’ step forwards by the corresponding amount.
- Additionally, the numeric keypad can be used as follows:
-, + step back or forwards by one frame 1, 3 step back or forwards by 0.25s 4, 6 step back or forwards by 1s 7, 9 step back or forwards by 5s 2, 8 play backwards or forwards 5 toggle playback /, * setstart/end of a selection (in2/out2)
These keys apply in the media dialog, in the Movie and Proxy tab of the clip details dialog, and when playing movies full screen.